EXPECTED PER CAPITA CONSUMPTION

Expected Per Capita Consumption

Expected Per Capita Consumption

Introduction

Concerns about environmental degradation have become an important recurring theme within the international debates on the sustainability of economic systems also in the recent period. Nevertheless, the question of availability of minerals and its relationship with economic growth can certainly be considered of undisputable importance within the field of economic studies since the beginning of the eighteenth century (Robinson, 1980; Fisher, 1987; Pearce and Turner, 1990).

Industrialised countries, during the years of economic booms (1960s), paid little attention to the limited nature of natural resources (Tilton et al., 1988) even if the 1973 first energy crisis helped in changing several authoritative opinions.

For developing countries, the problems of economic growth and resource depletion to sustain such a growth are linked and exacerbated by the demographic increase. OECD (2001) estimates the world total population between 7.3 and 10.7 billions of people in 2050 with the majority of such people living in developing countries. A further problem is the not homogeneous distribution of such people as a result of social/economic progressive transformations. As a matter of fact, the rate of inhabitants living in urban areas - expressed as average level for developed ones - should increase to 60 per cent in 2025 while it was only 45 per cent in 1994 (projections consider also a further increase even more up to 80-90 per cent).

Such aspects have evoked a sizeable literature on the pollution-income per capita relationship following the well-known model called “Environmental Kuznets Curve” (EKC) (Beckerman, 1992; Grossman and Krueger, 1996; de Bruyn and Opschoor, 1997; Panayotou, 1999; Andreoni and Levinson, 2001; Ezzati et al., 2001). The most appealing point of these theoretical assumptions is that environmental quality deteriorates during the early stages of economic development and improves in the later stages as economy continues its growth hence, for these reasons, a specific analysis of important developing countries seems advisable.

Economic growth and metals consumption: the same parallelism between developed and developing countries?

Towards the transition from mainly rural economic system to more industrialised ones, reciprocal and existing relationships among different environmental elements acquire complex and increasing interdependent connotations during the various stages of the process itself (Tucker, 1995; Cluver et al., 1998; Weber and Perrels, 2000).

The raising, unstable and cyclical trend in apparent overall metals' consumption for the different uses is a very important element in the analysis of the whole economic systems of the countries involved in such transformations (Eggert, 1991). As a consequence, the final effect can be so much relevant as higher are both the impact of the change and its speed.

For all these kind of considerations, concerns about the future of the whole world, the (rightful) economic growth expectations of developing countries and the new international relationships among countries have gained a renewed attention among a considerable part of scholars and politicians. The case of China, for example, assumes a paradigmatic role because its commercial relationships are growing at raising rates after a long period of economic isolation (Chang et ...